The Elk Rapids plate. Relief from Copernicus GLO-30; rivers and lakes from USGS NHD; watersheds from the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset; roads and city limits from Census TIGER 2024.
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73° on Nov. 11, 2022, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1979. Next is 69° in 2012.
Elk Rapids’s center stands about 600 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 570 ft to 690 ft, a difference of 120 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Hickory Hill, about 1,040 ft, 15 miles southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Ellsworth Shale, from the Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 35×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale.
Heights from Copernicus GLO-90 (a surface model: it includes buildings and tree canopy); summits from USGS GNIS; rivers from USGS NHDPlus HR; rock from the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation.
Rain that falls on Elk Rapids runs straight into Lake Michigan. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Elk Rapids; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Elk Rapids has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 16° in February. About 31 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Elk Rapids normally reaches 47° and falls to 33°. The record high is 62°, in 2005; the record low 14°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.46 in, fell in 2024.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1979 at Old Mission 3 SSW, 5 miles west-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
